Recent information obtained by FRB-I researchers, uncovers little known facts about events in Saqlawiyah, after militiamen began terrorising the area’s fleeing residents. The information exposes a side of the story not covered elsewhere

​Sporadic violence has erupted in the Iraqi city of Saqlawiyah, Anbar province, after fleeing families from the area were held in their tracks by militia forces.

The orchestrators of the latest spate of violence include a cluster of militia groups from Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMFs): Saraya al Khorasani, Asa’ib ahl al haq, Saraya Ashura, Iraqi Hezbollah brigade, and members from Iraq’s federal police.

Eyewitnesses recounted the merciless behaviour of these actors, who “spared no one” a woman whose men remain missing told FRB’s research team.

Assaults were conducted by Baghdad and Tehran backed militiamen against defenceless civilians as they migrated in flocks out of their home towns in Saqlawiyah and Garma.

​Early on, men were whisked away from their families and forces onto trucks, in numbers that far exceed the holding capacity of the vehicles transporting them to unknown locations.

One of these was reported to have been a derelict warehouse on the outskirts of Saqlawiyah, where rounds of torture were initiated against male hostages. Another location referred to throughout eyewitness reports is tareq camp (al Mazraa) were several massacres reported took place. The majority of the main slain belonged to the Sunni Mahmadiyya tribe.

Hours into the massacre, a Sunni officer whose identity has been protected upon request, warned minister of defense Khaled al Obeidi, of unfolding events.

Obeidi was outside of iraq on a political tour in search of external military backing of the Fallujah campaign. The officer forged a line of communication instead the the Mahmadiyya tribe, to exchange and relay vital information.

Later the same evening, Sunni parliamentarians united in an effort to condemn these events. Hours after, the survivors of the ordeal were taken to Bzaibiz crossing and rushed to Amariyat al Fallujah camps for urgently needed medical treatment.